


Rumors

by Leif Writes (FrankensteinsMomster)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Anxiety, Bullying, Depression, Gen, Young Malcolm Bright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22775053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrankensteinsMomster/pseuds/Leif%20Writes
Summary: They were talking about him like he couldn't hear them. Like he wasn't sitting just a few feet away. Like they didn't care if he heard them or not.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	Rumors

He could hear them talking. He sat at his desk, head down, staring at the pages of the book in front of him without absorbing a single word. Occasionally turning a page. 

They were talking about him like he couldn't hear them. Like he wasn't sitting just a few feet away. Like they didn't care if he heard them or not. 

"He doesn't talk to anyone."

"I heard he actually visits his father."

"He ran out of class last week"

"I dare you to ask him about his dad"

He tried to calm his shaking body. Tried to ignore the not so quiet whispers and stares. What they said was true.

He didn't talk to anyone at school but no one would talk to him so that made it easy. He was a social outcast of the worst degree. His teachers didn't even want to talk to him. People looked at him with disgust. With hate. Or what he hated the most, with pity. 

He did visit his father, he knew it wasn't right. That every time he visited him was a spit in the face to all of his victims. That it didn't make sense. But he was still his father. He was lost and conflicted and filled with hurt but he just couldn't find it in himself to cut off contact with his father like his mother had. 

He had run out of class. He didn't know how his teacher had been so clueless. Handing him a scalpel and a frog to dissect set off a massive panic attack that caused him to run as fast as he could out of the room. He was just glad to get out before he vomited and locked himself into an empty classroom. He screamed until his throat was raw and his mother had been called to coax him out.

And they did dare each other to ask him about his father. Often. He had stopped replying, stopped acknowledging their heartless adolescent questioning. They didn't know, didn't understand how much it pained him every time he heard his father's name on their lips. He didn't hold it against them. At least that's what he told himself. They were privileged rich kids. 

Even before it all he wasn't fully like them. He came from old money but that didn't mean he was particularly popular or well liked. He had always been a bit strange. A bit off. A bit different. 

They were rich and carefree. They didn't have murderous fathers in prison. They never had to testify against their own flesh and blood. They didn't have the press at their doors pushing cameras and questions into their faces, month after month. They didn't have to listen to their mothers drunkenly sob when she thought he and Ainsley were asleep. They didn't have to explain for the umpteenth time to their little sister that dad wasn't coming home. He was never coming home again. They would never know the crushing anxiety he felt every second of his existence. The depression and empty hole in his heart. The guilt that infected every atom of his being. They knew nothing. 

He sat at his desk pretending not to hear them. Their words didn't matter. There wasn't any cruel words they could say that he didn't already believe.


End file.
